Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died, Central Clinical Hospital reported.
The Soviet reformer was in his 91. He was being treated for a long-term illness in Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, according to Russian media reports.
Gorbachev is to be buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow beside his wife, as was his wish, RIA Novosti reported. He will join the likes of his immediate successor, Boris Yeltsin, fellow Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev, Russian-Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol, and Russian playwright Anton Chekhov in the cemetery. The date of the funeral is yet to be determined.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin “deeply sympathizes” with Gorbachev’s family and friends and will send a telegram to them in the morning.
Upon his ascension to the position of general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Gorbachev sought to reform the bloated Soviet system. His two main initiatives were perestroika, or “restructuring,” which sought to establish a more market-oriented economy, and glasnost, or “openness,” which sought to curtail restrictions on free speech.
He also began an open dialogue with his U.S. counterparts, firing up friendly relations between the two for the first time since the end of World War II. Gorbachev even won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his work to end Cold War tensions.
Though Gorbachev was a committed Marxist up until his death, with his efforts intending only to reform the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union ultimately proved too unwieldy to reform. The former superpower dissolved with Gorbachev as its first and final president on Dec. 25, 1991.
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In his life after the Soviet Union, Gorbachev remained on the margin of Russian politics while giving lectures internationally, including at several U.S. colleges. He made an unsuccessful bid for president of Russia in the 1996 election, winning just 0.5% of the vote.
Gorbachev became increasingly bitter about his legacy over time, criticizing both the West and Putin for their roles in doing away with what he saw as his positive effect on the world. In a 2021 interview with RIA Novosti, Gorbachev heavily criticized the United States and the West for their actions after the fall of the Soviet Union, saying they had grown arrogant and self-confident, according to CBS News. He also accused them of building a “new empire” through the expansion of NATO.
Though publicly silent about the affair, Gorbachev reportedly saw the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as the final undoing of his legacy.
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“What Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev did is all destroyed,” his close friend Alexei Venidiktov told Forbes Russia in July, according to Newsweek, claiming to echo Gorbachev’s beliefs. “All Gorbachev’s reforms — to zero, to ashes, to smoke.”
The former Soviet leader, who was born in 1931, was being treated at Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow for long-term kidney problems.
